Discrete Element Method - Advantages of coupling Passage^®: DEM and FLOW CFD Software

By coupling PASSAGE^® DEM and FLOW software a variety of problems can be solved which can not be treated by using either one model individually. This capability allows modeling of liquids, gases, solid particles and their mixtures for many industrial problems in both micro and macro scales. It can be applied to process modeling of mixing, wetting, coating, filtration, fermentation and filling operations for applications in food, pharmaceutical, chemical, metals, plastics, glass, ceramics, powders processing and emission control.

DEM and FLOW modules can be coupled in a variety of ways depending on the application:

• Many mixtures or two-phase flows require modeling of microscopic behavior of the material (e.g. air flow around solid particles. In this case DEM and FLOW modules are executed in parallel.
• Industrial applications of particle flows usually involve billions of particles which cannot be efficiently modeled by DEM models. On the other hand, flow codes can not predict the material properties of mixtures or particle flows in sufficient detail due to the lack of accurate material models. In this case, DEM model is used to determine material properties for the FLOW model.

Coupling of Passage^®/ DEM and FLOW Software

Example: Fluidized Bed Granulation of Tablets
Flow Model - Air Velocity		DEM Model Particles
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Coupling of Passage®/ DEM and FLOW Software brochure (.pdf)

Example: Mixing of Powders A. DEM Model Mixing of powders for industrial applications, involves calculation of the motion of large number of particles. DEM models can be used to simulate applications with smaller number of particles in the laboratory. Limited number of particles Input: Microscopic properties of material Output: Motion of each particle B. Simple Models DEM Model Flow Model Simple experiments can be designed which are modeled by using both DEM and FLOW. Microscopic material properties are used for the DEM model. Macroscopic material properties are then determined by comparing the DEM and FLOW solutions for simple cases. Input: Microscopic material properties for DEM model Output: Macroscopic material properties for FLOW model C. Flow Model After determining the material properties for particle flow, FLOW model is used for solving industrial problems. Billions of Particles Input: Material Properties for FLOW model Output: Material Flow: for the application with large number of particles Contact us for a more detail discussion of Technalysis' engineering capabilities.
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